The Butt Ugly Weblog

I've been a bit of a Scott Sigler junkie for a long time. I listened to many of his books as podcasts, and really liked the way he talked to his audience. And he has a gnarly imagination - if a whispered "chicken scissors" makes you wince, you probably know what I'm talking about. However, since he seemed to grab some fame with his Rookie series (Galactic Football League - yawn) I sort of dialed out of what he was doing. I was really looking for hearing more about hard scifi stuff, but got sportsy stuff instead. Oh well.

However, he's back. I just finished Scott Sigler's Pandemic, and boy, is it good. It reads like an action movie - and if any of his books should be optioned for a movie, this would be it. I could easily see myself watching this as a summer blockbuster in 2017.

Pandemic continues the story set in motion by "Infected" and "Contagious", in which a nearby alien robot spacecraft starts to convert humanity to its own cause using all sorts of nifty biotechnology. The alien is actually smart, so it keeps testing different approaches, which makes things sometimes... difficult to cope with. Even though the books are science horror fiction, the sciency stuff is actually rather light, but avoids the technobabble feeling. It is perhaps not entirely accurate, but it is totally plausible within the given constraints of the universe, and does not make me cringe.

The characters are lightweight, another sign of an action movie, but it works out ok - the book takes place over just a few days, and there's a lot to cover while still keeping the book trim.

So yeah, I liked this one. I liked it enough to even do this writeup :-). So if you're a fan of the techno-horror-scheme, this is certainly a good one. You don't have to read the two previous parts; but it might make the beginning of the book a bit more clear.

Update: forgot to mention - my kids were having chicken pox at the same time. The alien biotech causes similar effects, so I kept checking the kids extra carefully...